List of people who have mysteriously disappeared

My new Wikipedia list obsession: List of people who have mysteriously disappeared. Some of the "mysteries" are not as mysterious as you might hope (some Romans and ancient Gauls who disappeared in the midst of war, for instance) but the list goes back to 71 BC and there's enough interesting entries to warrant some high-quality time suck.

From our forums

After reading more complete accounts, I'm not really sure why my school textbooks played up the Roanoke Colony as a mystery. We don't know exactly what happened because nobody bothered to fully investigate until long, long after, but what we do know is pretty clear: the colony, already hungry and deprived of resupply, had packed up in a cautious and orderly fashion with no sign of duress or violence and left the name of a nearby friendly native group carved in a post. Many years later, new settlers reported Native Americans with blond hair, blue eyes, some English words in their language, and family names matching the Roanoke roster. It's not hard to guess from there.